As conventional energy resources such as petroleum and coal may soon run out, interest regarding energy sources which may substitute for them has increased. For an example, a fuel cell is particularly being researched because of merits of high efficiency and an absence of exhaust pollution materials such as NOx and SOx, and a usable fuel therein is abundant.
The fuel cell is an electric generator system that converts chemical reactive energy of a fuel and an oxidizing agent to electrical energy. Typically, hydrogen or methanol is used as the fuel, and oxygen is used as the oxidizing agent.
In the fuel cell, the most basic unit generating electricity is a membrane-electrode assembly (MEA), and this consists of electrolyte film, and an anode and a cathode formed at respective surfaces of the electrolyte film. Referring to FIG. 1 and Reaction Formula 1 (a reaction formula of a fuel cell when hydrogen is used as a fuel) indicating an electrical generation principle, an oxidation reaction of the fuel and oxygen (oxidizing agent) occurs at the anode electrode to generate a hydrogen ion and an electron, the hydrogen ion moves to the cathode electrode through the electrolyte film, the hydrogen ion is transferred through the electrolyte membrane, and the electron reacts at the cathode electrode to generate water. By this reaction, the electron moves to an external circuit.anode electrode: H2→2H++2e cathode electrode: ½O2+2H+2e-→H2Owhole reaction formula: H2+½O2→H2O  Reaction Formula 1
In a manufacturing process of the membrane-electrode assembly, the membrane-electrode assembly has been produced by attaching a protection membrane to both surfaces of the electrolyte membrane, and hot compressing the anode electrode (fuel pole) to which a catalytic layer is applied and the cathode electrode (air pole). This process has a discontinuity property because respective components are manufactured by respective steps and by manual labor. Also, it is difficult to standardize performance because of operation errors occurring due to the manual labor inputs. Thereby, the discontinuous manufacturing process has a low production speed, and it is too difficult to control factors determining performance.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the disclosure and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.